New Family

Ok, been a few days, haven't posted, haven't written. Defiantly the start of a slippery slope. This blog post owes its existence to the prof who i work for (thank you prof i work for!). See tonight while i was working i had this idea that had to do with me learning to program using MATLAB and a computer which no one in the lab uses.

Anywho this post doesn't have to do with MATLAB or the computer, or even psych really. Rather it has to do with where i ended up when i went to talk to him about this. He was at an event that decides which book the new students of the university read in the fall. There are four books currently competing for the spot and though i am rooting for Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell one of the themes of the other books caught me.

To be perfectly honest i cannot recall what the other book was titled, so i can't give you a link to order it. But i can summarize the plot in a few quick points!
- Selfish woman gets in car crash
- Destroys car that is home to grandmother and kids who are going to another city to get work
- Mother of kids is in hospital dying of cancer
- Father of kids is MIA
- Selfish woman takes in family from car
- Selfish woman becomes unselfish

Quick and dirty summing up, i can't go into more detail because A) i have never read it and B) this is me recalling the summary i heard a few hours ago and things get fuzzy after a few minutes...

Anywho the reason that this book is bringing up the post you are reading is because the book is about a woman who creates a family out of people she meets (which is the reason that they want university students to read it). Me personally, i have never been one to find family such a brilliant reason for staying in touch with people i have less in common with than the chimpanzees who use tools at the zoo, but i am now starting to get a bit of the building a family out of friends.

The number of people who use the terms "love, family, best friend" over and over with regards to everyone they know horrifies me. I have an undying love for language, it is why i write, it is why i talk the amount i do, it is one of the many reason i am going for a degree in philosophy. Seeing words that have these deep meanings tossed around like leaves on an autumn day truly does upset me. They have been tossed around by people i know at university and yet i also know that myself along with several others have truly meant it when they said it.

And this brings me to my second story. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in January (do you remember January? it is getting to be far away...) there was a meeting in my residence, where most of my friends here happen to live. It was a painfully long and boring meeting filled with ideas like do your work ahead of time so that you don't get all stressed and do your readings after classes so you don't have to do them the night before the mid-term.... Anywho in and amongst the rest of the usual stuff that students ignore and mock the entire time (inbetween the yelling and cheering anyways) was the comment that this is the time of year people become close or fall apart.

The second semester was remarked upon as the time when people begin looking for houses, all the exams and assignments people should have been working all year long on become due, and the drinking goes up as more people turn 19. AKA second semester is stress central. And in this time it becomes so easy for people to develop a conflict and not talk it out.

We all are in university here, we are supposed to have left the high school drama behind. I know that it will never fully leave completely but as the guy who spoke for the book outliers said tonight "This is the time when we are becoming who we are for the rest of our lives" do you guys really want to be the type of "family" who doesn't talk things out and lets pride and lack of communication break us all apart? Or are we all going to take some steps and grow up, prevent that divorce and show just how much our friendships mean to all of us.

I don't really want two birthdays and Christmases, do you? Check this out if you need to think some more.